You gotta squeeze that som bitch. Your wrist in the bench is similar to your lower back on the squat. It’s the small week point in the whole movement. You’ve got to squeeze the bar tight the same way you have to tighten up your abs when squatting to keep everything in line. This is also great advice for softball. You will hit the ball a lot further if you concentrate on squeezing the bat when you make contact.
I’ve been benching for 15 years with an open grip and rarely have used spotters over the last 10. Even with the open grip my forearms are smoked after bench from squeezing the bar. I’m only going up to 315 for sets of 5-6 when I do go heavy, so I’m no power lifter, but my little 7 inch wrists would probably give way with that weight if I wasn’t focusing on the grip.
I had the same problem once when benching off of pins (luckily I’m always in a power rack).
My wrist just sort of snapped forward too fast to even think about catching it or readjusting.
I think it was a grip strength issue since that has always been my week point.
Also, I was using a deadlift bar with the ball bearings. That bar is TERRIBLE for benching (I later found out), but good for deads.
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
JimmyJamesMD wrote:
Without help, how the hell could one person put heavy weight on their back when doing pushups???
Someone mentioned x-vest; yup! Load that baby up to 84 lbs and better yet? Do your push ups with some power rings and come talk to me! You’ll be pleasantly surprised and, humbled!
[/quote]
Speaking of power rings … here’s a cool, fun exercise:
Set up just like you are going to do a push up on the rings (or chains, whatever). You might spread your feet a slight bit wider. Now, with one arm … do the push up motion. With the other, do a side fly motion. End result, the push-up arm works harder in the tris and the fly arm works harder in the pecs. Alternate back and forth (or like me, do alternate back and then fall flat on your face).
Lots of fun.
Regards,
Mark
This is more common than you think, yrs ago when I managed a few gyms I saw this happen a couple of times a yr.
I would have to say its a technique issue the benchers I saw this happen to almost always held there hands in a almost straight position instead of allowing to let the hand bend backwards to add a shelf for the bar eventually without fail something would go ammiss and because of the relatively straight hand position the hand would roll forward.
Several of the guys I talked to about this seemed to have a fear of letting the wrist bend backwards in some beleif this would damage their wrists.
The only time I ever saw anyone seriously get hurt was when this happened with a pair of 100lb Dbs the first day we got them severly sprained his wrist and broke 3 ribs and pulled his shoulder.